Led Zeppelin and The FundamentalTension Between The Individual andThe Team

How Super Producer Rick Rubin Gets People To Do Their Best Work

You sit, eyes closed, and turn your attention inward. You focus your attention on an immediate experience, perhaps your breath or a mantra. You become more aware of yourself as a body breathing. When thoughts or emotions come up, you observe them with curiosity, openness and acceptance. Then you bring your attention back to the present. Each moment is a new experience. You enter an intense state of relaxation and alertness.

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Why Roadies Are Our Best Bet ForTyphoon Haiyan Relief In The Philippines

“Mr. President,” said former roadie and production manager for The Police Charlie Hernandez in April 2011, taking a pen out of his pocket, “I can get this pen anywhere on Earth in 72 hours.” He was talking to Bill Clinton after an awards dinner for Clinton’s Global Initiative featuring Sting and Trudie Styler. “Wow,” Clinton answered in his Southern drawl, “Can I borrow your pen?”

Ruth Blatt writes for Forbes.com’s leadership channel about popular music using research on management and entrepreneurship. She shows a different side of musicians and music industry professionals by writing about them as navigators of their own careers, as leaders of small businesses, and as part of self-managed creative teams. She has a Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from the University of Michigan and taught Entrepreneurship to MBAs at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She has written for TheAtlantic.com, Psychology Today and Wired.com.She currently writing a book about the history and production of rock concerts.

Bill Graham, who is the subject of an exhibition in Los Angeles’s Skirball Cultural Center, was the ultimate entrepreneur, a man who identified an opportunity and founded a successful business to capitalize on it. He recognized that a rock concert could be about more than bands playing for audiences, but also a community-building experience.

Back in the 1950 and 1960, Elvis Presley or Beatles fans probably didn’t care about the people screaming next to them at the show. It was all about the performers. In the late 1960s, however, rock & roll festivals such as the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock transformed live music into community-building events. People came for the music, but also for the vibe, the experience, for the like-minded people. Almost fifty years later, festivals—and their accompanying emphasis on community and experience—are at the epicenter of live music.